


Overload

by LibraryMage



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Autism, Autistic Character, Brother-Sister Relationships, Found Family, Gen, Sensory Overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8175182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryMage/pseuds/LibraryMage
Summary: Sabine is overloaded and breaks down.  Ezra is new to the crew and doesn't know how to react.
(CW for self-injurious stims and internalized ableism)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is set during early season 1, shortly after Ezra joins the crew.

Sabine knew it was gonna be a bad day from the moment she woke up.  It didn’t help that she was awoken by the sound of Ezra and Zeb loudly bickering about who-in-the-galaxy-cared-what.

When she stumbled out of her room, still half-asleep, Hera greeted her with a warm cup of caf.

“Drink up,” she said.  “Fulcrum just called.  There’s a shipment of weapons leaving the factory today.  With the guards spread thin right now, this is our chance to hit them.”

Sabine took the caf from Hera and chugged it, not saying anything.

“You having a quiet day?” Hera asked.

Sabine nodded.

“No problem,” Hera said, giving the younger girl a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.

* * *

 

The mission went about as smoothly as they usually did.  They’d gotten the weapons, or most of them anyway, and Hera was going to contact Fulcrum to arrange a dead-drop.  As the _Ghost_ left Lothal’s atmosphere, Sabine threw herself into a chair and pulled her knees up to her chest, staring blankly into the empty space in front of her.

“Are you okay?” Ezra asked, sitting down next to her.

Sabine shook her head.

“Can you stop?” she muttered, putting her head in her hands.

“Stop what?” Ezra asked.

“Just _stop_ ,” Sabine said.  She slammed one of her hands into the side of her head.  She should have just shut herself in her room the second they got back to the ship.  Ezra’s voice, Kanan’s footsteps, the sound of the _Ghost’s_ engine, the clacking noise Chopper made as he rolled across the floor, all of it grated on her ears and rattled inside her head and she didn’t know how to shut it all off.

“Sabine --” Ezra started and was cut off by Sabine groaning (practically _growling_ ) and hitting herself again.

She froze when she felt Ezra’s hand over hers.  With a yelp, she pulled her hand away and shoved him away from her.  She put her hands over her ears and shut her eyes, but that did nothing to help block out all the _things_ happening around her.

“Sabine?” she heard Hera’s voice saying quietly.  “You want to go somewhere quieter?”

Sabine nodded.

“Come on,” Hera said.  She led Sabine out of the common area to her room, occasionally touching the girl’s shoulder to guide her past things she couldn’t see, taking care to let Sabine know before she did it.  Even with her eyes shut, Sabine could _feel_ Ezra’s eyes on her.  Tears began stinging her eyes.  She should have talked to him before, should have told him.  He probably thought she was such a freak now.  Her whole body shuddered as she let out a sob.

“I’ll tell Ezra not to bother you, okay?” Hera said.

Sabine nodded.

As Hera walked back into the common area, she heard Ezra asking Kanan “Is she gonna be okay?”

“She’ll be fine,” Hera said.  “She just needs to be alone for a while.”

“What happened?” Ezra asked.

“Sabine can probably explain it better,” Kanan said.  “But she gets…overwhelmed sometimes.  It’s usually best not to touch her when she’s like that.  It scares her.”

“It felt like I hurt her,” Ezra said, remembering the fear and pain he’d felt coming off Sabine in waves.  “I didn’t mean it.”

“We know,” Hera said.  “And she knows that, too, but it’d probably mean a lot to her to hear it from you.”

“Later,” Kanan said.  “When she’s feeling better.”

* * *

 

A few hours later, Ezra gently tapped on Sabine’s door.

“It’s open,” he heard her say quietly.  Ezra entered the room and found Sabine sitting on her bed with her pillow clutched against her chest.  The slight redness in her eyes told him she’d been crying not long ago.

“Hey,” she said as Ezra sat down on the bed beside her.  She stared down at the floor, not wanting to look at him.

“I'm sorry,” Ezra said.

“Me too,” Sabine said.

“Kanan explained it to me a little,” Ezra told her.  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know,” she said.  “You’re new here.  You didn’t know.”

They sat there silently until Sabine started talking again.

“I should’ve talked to you sooner,” she said.  “If you’re gonna be part of the crew, you should have known.”

“Kanan said you could explain it better than he could,” Ezra said.  He didn’t quite know what questions he should be asking her, and he didn’t want to push, either.

“The way my brain works is just different from most people,” she said.  “On Mandalore, we call it an’aalan.  It’s like…” she started then trailed off, trying to find the words to explain it to him.  This happened every time.  She would try to explain it, and the words would just vanish.

“It’s like…things happen a lot,” she finally said.  “Sounds, touch, smells, feelings, and my head’s too small for all of it.  I get overloaded because it’s too much, and I shut down or I’ll break down like what you just saw.  You touching me when I was already overloaded was just too much.”

“Kanan told me not to touch you when you get like that,” Ezra said.  “It just looked like you were gonna hurt yourself.”

“I wasn’t,” she said.  “Not that bad, anyway.”

Sabine kicked her heels in frustration and began to rock back and forth.  There was so much to explain and she didn’t know _how._

“It’s just that there’s a lot,” she said.  “My brain works so different from most people that it’s hard to explain it so they’ll understand.  It’s not just my senses, either, it’s…I don’t understand people a lot.  When they’re upset with me or want me to stop talking or whether they're trying to be nice or not.”

Her voice picked up speed as she rushed to get it all out while she still had words to do it.  Ezra, thankfully, didn’t say anything, didn’t knock her off track.

“Sometimes I just can't talk.  Sometimes I do things and I get so deep into them I forget everything else.  Like when I'm painting my walls and I forget I need to leave the room and breathe fresh air.”

Sabine picked up the pillow and held it over her face.

“I know all of this sounds so weird, okay?” she muttered.

“Not really,” Ezra said.  “I mean, not any weirder than anything else.”

Sabine sighed and put the pillow down, looking at Ezra for the first time since he’d entered the room.

“People just don’t always understand, you know?” she said, gently bumping her shoulder against his.  “But it means a lot that you’re trying.”

**Author's Note:**

> I made up the word "an’aalan" for this fic because I needed a Mando'a word for autism. I used the root words "an" (meaning "all") and "aalar" (meaning "feel," which becomes "aalan" in the gerund, or -ing form). I picked those words because I wanted the Mando'a word for autism to have better etymological connotations than the actual word.
> 
> (/ravings of a linguist with too much free time)


End file.
